Fall enrollment at Southwestern College jumped nearly 10 percent from a year ago and is the highest for the school since the development of modern standards for counting students.
The official counting period ? which looked at student counts on the 20th day of classes during the fall semester ? showed that 1,703 students were enrolled, up from 1,559 last year.
Student numbers include undergraduate and graduate students on the main campus in Winfield, students in professional studies centers in Wichita, Oklahoma City and Fort Riley.
Sara Weinert, vice president for communications at SC, said there was a time in the 1920s when a partnership between the college and a music school inflated student counts. But in the modern era, the new numbers mark an all-time high for the college.
The count also includes online students.
Enrollment total was augmented by Southwestern’s entry into a partnership with the United States Air Force’s Air University Associate-to-Baccalaureate Cooperative. The military program is being credited with more than doubling the number of new learners entering the college’s online degree completion program.
Announced in June 2007, the partnership provides distance learning and bachelor’s degree opportunities for active duty members of the Air Force, Air Force Reserves, and Air National Guard.?
Graduate program enrollments on the main campus and in professional studies also increased.
“Our goal, always, is to be responsive to the needs of students in our region. But with the growth of our online programs, the college’s reach has increased dramatically, and we can now serve a student body that lives and works all over the world,” SC president Dick Merriman said.
Also measured in the federal government’s official 20th day counts are number of “full-time equivalent” students. This number is calculated by dividing the total credit hours taken by 15 hours, a full-time class load.
The residential Winfield campus posted a full-time equivalence of 577 students, with nearly 280 full time equivalent students in professional studies on-ground and online.? Professional studies programs are designed for working adults, and most in these programs are part-time students.
